Harvest
by Philote
Summary: King Edmund the Just is a very different man from the Edmund Pevensie who stumbled into Narnia years before. But that boy and his mistakes are still a part of him. An untimely illness brings some of those issues to the forefront once more.


Title: Harvest

Author: philote_auctor

Rating: PG

Character/Pairing: Edmund, Peter, Tumnus, gen

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of _Chronicles of Narnia_ do not belong to me. I make no money from this story. Please don't sue.

Author's Notes: Written for narniaexchange on lj. Prompt: Golden Age, AU, Edmund; A certain kind of grace

Summary: King Edmund the Just is a very different man from the Edmund Pevensie who stumbled into Narnia years before. But that boy and his mistakes are still a part of him. An untimely illness brings some of those issues to the forefront once more.

oOo

It begins with a scratchy throat when he wakes one morning. He thinks little of it; ignores it, in fact, and soon forgets about it altogether. There's more than enough going on to occupy him.

The little settlement of Aridge is bustling with activity. It's on the outskirts of Narnia, very nearly atop the northern border in the shelter of the nearby mountains. It is still relatively new and has a small but dedicated number of occupants, all hard at work now to bring in their first true harvest before what the best predictions say will be a harsh winter.

Edmund and Peter arrived a week ago after nearly a week of travel before that. The Narnians had been thrilled at their arrival, though some were surprised by their intent to roll up their sleeves and help out. One small faun had inquired with big eyes why her kings would deign to get their hands dirty alongside her father.

Said father was unsurprised, however, as he was none other than Mr. Tumnus.

He had simply smiled, gracing the top of his child's head with a soft grin as Peter knelt and explained that her kings held themselves no higher than her father and sought to help their subjects in any way they could.

They are staying in the Tumnus's modest little home. It was Edmund who'd convinced the faun and his wife not to give up their own room, thus landing he and Peter in the small space of the daughter's room while she sleeps with her parents. The two kings split time between the little bed (which will barely hold Peter) and a pallet on the floor. If Peter minds, he hasn't let on. And Edmund is rather relishing the tight quarters, so reminiscent of Before (before Narnia, though they think on that little now) and yet with such better feeling to it. Most days he and Peter are essentially grown-ups even if they are still young teens by chronological years. But every once in a while—especially here, far from advisers and thrones and battle plans—they can recapture a childhood camaraderie.

He'd teased Peter after their second day in the fields when the elder boy had woken with stiff, sore muscles. They are both in decent shape from daily training and the exercise of adventure, but neither is accustomed to such physical labor. Still, somehow Edmund has been mostly spared the aches and pains that Peter suffered at first.

He's never done work like this, but he is finding somewhat unexpectedly that there is something he loves about it. It is difficult and often monotonous and yet so satisfying, to know that what he is doing will provide for people—_his_ people.

There is perhaps a small sense of unease trying to intrude on his work. Though he refuses to dwell on it, he knows the cause. He can smell the first hints of impending winter in the air and feel it in every cool breeze.

He copes. When the cold tendrils try to creep in, he simply throws himself harder into the work or surrounds himself with others.

However, the day his sore throat first makes its appearance finds him struggling a bit. He finds it hard to focus and his thoughts keep drifting—mostly back to the winter he'd rather forget. He's exhausted, more so than he should be, beyond the healthy sort of tiredness after a fruitful day.

He tries to hide it but that is near impossible with Peter, especially in such close quarters. Peter insists that he take the bed that night despite it being his turn, and Edmund drifts to sleep with the feel of an extra attentive gaze aimed his way.

The next morning, there's some congestion along with a far more noticeably sore throat. He's coughing a bit as Peter steps up behind him at the washbasin and pats his back. "All right there, Ed?"

"Fine. A bit stuffy is all." He shifts to dry his hands and comes face to face with the concern in his brother's eyes. "You worry too much."

Peter snorts in a very un-kingly way. "Can't be helped. It's in the job description."

Edmund studies him solemnly for a moment, then declares, "It's giving you wrinkles."

The look on Peter's face is priceless. "I do not have _wrinkles_."

Edmund squints at him and points vaguely to the skin around his left eye. "Hm. Right there."

Peter's eyes automatically seek the mirror. Edmund bursts into giggles.

"You little brat!" the High King declares, wrestling the towel from Edmund's grasp and snapping it in his direction as he flees, worry misdirected for the moment.

He goes out into the fields as usual. By mid-day, he knows that 'a bit stuffy' is not all this is. He can't breathe—literally, he can't take in air through his nose and is left huffing and puffing through parted, parched lips. His head feels stuffed with cotton even as it pounds.

They pause in shifts for lunch. He skips his, not remotely hungry. Luckily Peter is caught up with some of the settlement children and fails to notice. Edmund keeps working.

By the time they quit for the day, he's feeling bad for teasing Peter over his sore muscles. His own are now aching horribly, and it's a rotten sort of thing to try to function with. He sits stiffly at the supper gathering, holding a bowl of soup. He manages to get down only a few swallows. His throat feels on fire.

Peter sits close, watching him even more closely, and Edmund knows that despite his protests he couldn't even fool one of the children into thinking he's fine, let alone his overprotective big brother. Peter is surprisingly quiet about it, taking the half-full bowl of soup from him without comment and continually pressing more water into his hands. He's startled awake when everyone starts to retire for the evening; surprised to find he's been lolling against Peter's shoulder. His brother steers him gently back to the Tumnus's house and literally puts him to bed, Edmund too out-of-sorts to protest that now it is _really_ Peter's turn.

It's not a good night, filled with tossing and shifting and strange dreams he can't remember upon waking. He drifts off again sometime shortly before dawn and the next time he wakes, he's dismayed to find the sun well into the sky and Peter long up and gone.

He does not feel better. If anything, the prone position has made him even stuffier. His head protests when he pushes himself upright and he nearly falls as white spots fill his vision.

He takes it slowly. Eventually he manages to get himself dressed and in some sense of order and make his way from the little bedroom to the main part of the home. Mrs. Tumnus is bustling about. Something is baking in the oven, something he's sure is delicious despite the way the smell is turning his stomach at the moment. He valiantly keeps the little soup he'd consumed the night before down and manages a smile. "Good morning, Mrs. Tumnus."

"Edmund, dear! You're up!"

He's glad they finally broke her of the habit of bowing each time either of them entered the room, but now she's starting to show a mothering attitude towards them. "No one woke me," he says.

"Of course not; you needed your rest. Are you feeling better?"

"Yes ma'am," he blatantly lies. His conscience prickles. But she beams at him and offers him tea, which he chokes down, and soon her littlest child starts whimpering from his crib and he's able to slip out the door while she's busy.

It's still hard to believe that their Mr. Tumnus has become this family man. For some reason, today Edmund cannot stop thinking of what a miracle that is, of a stone faun frozen in fear in a dark courtyard. He shivers as he throws himself into his work in the field.

He loses track of time and of himself. All he will remember later is wondering why it was so very hot, then looking up at the sun from a prone position in the fertile soil as running footsteps and shouting voices approach.

When he next gains awareness, he's back in the little bedroom. He's confused, wondering if he dreamt ever leaving the bed. The expression on Peter's face when he catches sight of him by the bedside suggests otherwise.

"You're awake," Peter announces rhetorically, reaching for him, concern coloring his voice and forcing his fingers to tremble ever so slightly.

Edmund lets his eyes slip closed again as he turns his face into the cool hand caressing his cheek. "What happened?" he croaks after some interminable amount of time.

"You collapsed out in the field." Edmund cracks his eyes open again to find the speaker. Tumnus is standing behind Peter, wetting a cloth and handing it to the older human.

Peter accepts it and bathes Edmund's face. "And you're delirious. At least, I hope that is why you didn't have the sense to stay in bed when you are so obviously ill."

Edmund doesn't answer him, coughing instead. He's pretty sure he'd known what he was doing, though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Peter helps him sit up enough to sip some water. As he lowers him back to the bed a few moments later he declares, "I'm going to send for Lucy."

Edmund shakes his head minutely, the slightest movement enough to cause a spike in pain. He tries to smile, though he expects it looks more like a grimace. "It's not as if I'm dying."

"You can't know that for certain! You didn't see yourself lying there between rows of crops, not moving, hardly breathing it seemed…"

"There's no need to worry them," Edmund dares to add.

"I beg to differ. Perhaps the situation looks different from this angle—which is to say _upright_." There's a harsh sarcasm in his tone now, something Peter resorts to very infrequently these days. Clearly, big brother is worried enough for all of them.

"It would take them nearly a week to get here," Edmund points out weakly. "I'll likely be well by then."

"Yes, but if you do get worse, they'll still be days away. We can't take that chance."

"We can't?"

"I won't," Peter clarifies with all the certainty of the High King. Edmund knows from experience that there is no arguing with that.

The next few days pass in a very unpleasant blur. At least he assumes days are passing; his only marker is the times he wakes to darkness versus light streaming from the little window.

Peter is with him often, probably more so than he should be. On the times when he is not, either Mr. or Mrs. Tumnus is. His world is reduced to cool cloths and sips of water, blankets and calming hands, pain and discomfort and nightmares.

It is the nightmares that bother him more than the pain and discomfort. They are more vivid now than they've been since the days immediately following the Battle of Beruna. Scenes of battle and bloodshed and ice cold skin flash before him. Weak as he is, he can conjure no defense against them and the dark thoughts they trigger. He wakes more than once to find Peter somehow crammed into the small bed with him, holding him close. He also learns that Mr. Tumnus is stronger than he looks, easily able to restrain his thrashing king.

He is told it has been three days when the fever finally breaks.

He is feeling marginally better—still incredibly weak but at least coherent—when Tumnus brings up Peter's point from right after Edmund's collapse. He sets an empty glass on the bedside table and eyes the young king seriously as he asks, "Why did you try to keep working even though you were so ill?"

"There's much to do—you all need me." It's true enough, but it sounds like a weak excuse even to his ears.

Tumnus's gaze is steady and knowing. "You were not dubbed King Edmund the Invincible," he says, not chiding but simply stating fact. "Your people need you healthy and in fit state to rule more than they need your physical labor. You know that."

"I'm not trying to earn favor."

"Good, because you've no need to." He studies Edmund for a long moment. "Can I tell you what I think?"

"You weren't already?" Edmund responds lightly.

"You're doing penance."

Edmund freezes, then frowns.

Tumnus goes on softly, "I don't think you even realize it."

Edmund swallows hard, thoughts racing. It is easy to forget that Mr. Tumnus flirted with darkness himself, doing the witch's dirty work, though for entirely different motives and stopping himself before it came to fruition. He endangered Lucy. But in the end he saved her, and he paid for it. Edmund is not sure he would compare their sins.

The faun continues in his soft manner, "It is hard to grasp, I know. But there is no need for penance. You were forgiven long ago."

"I know," Edmund says, very quietly and not entirely convincingly.

"There is no Narnian now living free who has not been touched by mercy. But you and I…we've been blessed by a very certain sort of grace." He pauses, gracing Edmund with a solemn smile. "We were not worthy of it, and we could not ever hope to make ourselves so. All we can do is be the best we can with the abilities we are given."

Edmund quirks a tiny grin. "And my abilities are not superhuman?"

"Precisely." Tumnus reaches to pull his blanket back up, not-so-subtly tucking him in before he stands. "Sleep well, my king," he instructs tenderly, as if it is truly an honor to do so.

As he slips from the room, Edmund's eyes prick with tears.

By the time Susan and Lucy arrive with their retinue a few days later, he is well on his way back to normal. He is very glad of that, unwilling to take even a drop of the cordial that might be needed so much more to save some other life.

The eyebrow Susan raises in Peter's direction accuses of overreaction, though she doesn't seem the slightest bit surprised or upset. Lucy had wanted to come with them in the first place, so she is thrilled to be here and very pleased to see her brother in decent shape. She is, of course, excited to see Mr. Tumnus.

As the faun catches her up in a tight hug, he meets Edmund's eyes over the young queen's shoulder.

Edmund meets the gaze with a nod and a true, full smile.

oOo


End file.
